However, there is still the fact that the more elderly there are, the more resources are drained to help them, which I am not saying is a bad thing, but to keep the cycle of social security cheques and pensions going, you need more people in the workforce who can work to pay taxes who in turn hope to receive the same benefits when they come of that age.
These elderly will eventually pass. This temporary increase in drag on economic productivity (“the pig in the Python”) is what you sign up for when your population can’t grow forever. The world has never been wealthier; we can afford a bit more elderly
care costs for a window of time.
Everyone likes to spend on a credit card, no one likes it when the statement comes and you have to pay.
Your [1] footnote seems to be missing...a search turns up plenty of references, and the analogy itself with the context of demographics is descriptive enough, but I'm curious what you were going to link to.
Baby boomer reference to Pig in the Python term. Removed because I didn’t feel it relevant when discussing world population versus a US centric cohort.
It's worse than that. Not only will social security be more difficult to fund, but private retirement savings will also be more difficult. Saving for retirement is much easier with a fast-growing economy in which you can get high rates of return. With a slower-growing, or even flat, economy, stocks and other investments should appreciate more slowly, too. (There are fewer good investment opportunities when the size of the pie is fixed.)
A flat population does not necessarily mean economic growth must stop. Economic growth can still come from plenty of other places, like better infrastructure, technology improvements, various types of efficiency gains, etc. etc.
Social security tax phaseout is currently ~$140k per year. It's fairly absurd that the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos of the world pay roughly the same amount into Social Security as an average programmer.
Indeed. Imagine having to lower real estate prices because demand falls. Fossil fuel use going down, less useless crap produced for less people, less pollution. Having to raise wages because of less unskilled labour available.
My counter argument is that humans are more wasteful when faced with abundance. Look at what we did when we discovered two continents worth of land. When perceived costs are low, waste is high.
Why throw out such a broad insult with no other thoughts? Not only are you dismissing multiple replies at once without elaborating at all on the reasons, you're also creating the impression for future readers that you are dismissing any future replies to your comment.
And why even bother, if you feel that "this place is pathetic. pseudo-intellectualism and autism run rampant" (according to your profile)?
I think everybody has their own breaking points but mine was today. If I hadn't of spent so much of my life here I probably would have just left and been done with it.
Are you ok? I don’t know you but your recent comments are hostile and I assume abnormal.
Please seek professional help outside HN. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, there is no shame in asking for help, but the internet is a bad place to get it.
The economy is there to the benefit of the people in it, not the other way around. An ever-increasing number of people on this fixed sized planet is simply unsustainable.
If we can live with less people who are happier, what's not to like?
It certainly seems like it would be a good thing for the economy, if you define "the economy" as how well all the humans are doing, as opposed to just absolute GDP and how wealthy the wealthy are.
His Mars trilogy includes a plot device where the Martians invent the biotech necessary for 400+ year lifespans - initially they try to keep it a secret, but it doesn't last as a secret for long. When word spreads to Earth, the debates rage - who gets it? Those who can pay for it? Thus increasing the inequality and also, massively surging overpopulation.
He's been thinking about this for a while, for sure. And I do wonder what is going to happen if we all get a 'chance' to live to 300 or something. Or forever. Yikes.
Image people born almost 300 years ago were still in power. Social change would likely be a lot slower. The society happy with slavery could still be the dominant property holders. Death, since it allows for more rapid adaptation, may be life's greatest invention. Too little of it could be crippling to a population.
Our species-optimal lifespan now might be quite different than the one picked by evolution. It could be much greater, or it could be lower. But twiddling with that dial carries a lot of risk.
It would solve the declining birth rate for one. With a 300 year lifespan you can afford to put your career on hold for 20 years while you have children. My belief is that an extended lifespan would force people to consider their impact on the world more, at our current span most people clock out well before the consequences kick in. If you stick around for a few centuries the results of your actions become much more evident. Maybe we’d all slow down a bit and enjoy life knowing that our mortality was delayed.
Indigenous people learned how to deal with psychopaths. Our culture lacks the safeguards against greed and antisocial behavior. In fact, we encourage those disorders, for the sake of “progress”.
More people most of all means more people who can and necessarily will break things, which are very hard to repair. Like climate stuff. The chance of having some super geniuses, that we would otherwise have missed out on, who then repair a broken climate is ... vanishingly small.
Actually there is a "demographic transition" in which, midway through, people suddenly realize that they don't need so many farmers and they don't have room in the city for them.
In Europe they fired the ovens for these people.
In the Middle East and Africa they are still fighting that war.
The Nazi death camps were because the cities didn't have room for the displaced farmers?!? That's certainly the most... um, "creatively original" historical revisionism I've read in a very long time.
In places like Poland to have status was to have land and vice versa so long as there was a solar economy; once people started burning coal and the economy became capital intensive yesterday’s aristocrats were nobodies and people who had previously been low-status doctors, business people and teachers (e.g. Jewish people) were on top.
Naturally those aristocrats were not happy about it. This all happened in about one and half human lifetimes and the people involved "wanted their country back".
If you look at Lenin vs. the Kulaks or Mao Zhedong vs. the world in both cases they realized their country was on the trailing edge of industrialization and decided they would beat down people in the country to accumulate capital and outgrow "the west". Hitler rode the fear of communism to power.
Situation of an individual is a very short term view. We are living on credit here and while it seems, that the conditions have become better, we are utterly unprepared for the backlash, which will happen, if we continue down this path.
I am more looking at the long term effects here, because I care about future generations too.
Another problem with your view is, that you are totally disregarding other species on planet Earth, which are going extinct or become endangered species in this very moment, in which we enjoy that our "condition is better than ever".
Conversely fewer people means fewer problems to solve...
We have emission targets to return to year 2000 or year 1980s levels.
We can have similar targets for pops: 1900s or 1960s, before we had fast doublings of populations, obviously through natural reduction rather than forced.
There is a much better way to have more geniuses: Increased access to education worldwide.
10% of adults worldwide still can't read (probably around 500M people), and 60% did not go further than secondary education.
This has the big advantage of not just increasing the raw number of "geniuses" but also the ratio of geniuses.
AFAIK, world population is projected to peak around 11 billion, which by many estimates could be feasibly sustainable with a few technological improvements to increase crop yields and decrease carbon emissions.
Perhaps I should remind you of a day, that comes once a year, called "Earth Overshoot Day". It is the day, when we used up more resources than the planet regenerates. The tendency for that day's date is come earlier each year.
The current population is not even sustainable. Half it and then perhaps it will be sustainable, if capped. Ecological damage will probably increase in the future, as swathes of people from developing countries will want to have the same living standards, that the first world countries experienced for decades. If you combine that with 11 billion people, it will be a disaster.
Doing everything we can, including birth limitations and laws, to not get there.
I recently heard about China stopping the one-child law stuff and I only wanted to facepalm. That's so typical. "We need more population for all our old people here!" disregarding what will happen with the planet (an objectively much more important thing than China, but hey, it's not China, so not their problem, right?!), if population surges again in China. I just hope, that the experts are correct and that it will not lead to another population increase.
China is bad, but it's not the main problem, Africa is. Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. Africa will be the last nail in this particular cofin.
Empower women. That is a proven path to reducing the fertility rate, even if direct cash transfers to women are necessary to more rapidly provide the autonomy and empowerment that would naturally occur through industrialization.
Sure, western women have been empowered so much so that birth rates have been below replacement for ages now. So this idea has some major problems. First, it will take too long - cultural changes take decades. Second, you won't be able to stop this particular snowball once it picks up momentum as is evident from the west.
Yep. Women education is the only thing with proven negative correlation to birth rate. That's why apart from WWF I only donate to women education in Africa.
Thanks for the doom and gloom, but to be fair -- the GP did mention this could happen with a few technological improvements -- specifically in food and ecology.
Citation needed. We’re 50 years away from running out of topsoil. Combine that with many other resources that are running out, and the compounding crises of climate and biodiversity loss. We’re not a few techno tweaks away from sustainability.
If you make a certain set of highly unrealistic assumptions about what "sustainable" requires, yes.
If you look at how human history has actually gone, you find that doomsayers in every time could find trends that, if projected out forever into the future, looked "unsustainable". And of course, if those trends had continued as they were, it would not have been sustainable. But the trends never continued as they were.
We humans can adapt to change by changing how we do things. Claims that our current population, or indeed any current human activity, is "unsustainable" ignore that crucial fact.
That's just a selection bias. No reasonable conclusion can be driven from all that. Even if you believe that extrapolation like that could make any sense.
If your argument were valid, it would apply to any attempt to draw conclusions based on past experience. Which means your argument can't be valid, since we can draw valid conclusions based on past experience.
I disagree. It will be possible only if we continue to do as we do today. In other words, being a climat migrant is not a big problem for rich people. For the poor, it will be a problem.
They'll live better then we do now. Will they have everything we do? Probably not - but probably in the sense that 200 years ago I could have owned a human being and I could have had them cook me a Dodo for breakfast.
If you ask me if I would trade places with that 200 years ago person I would say no. If you ask a person 200 years hence if they'd trade places with me I have no doubt that they'd say no as well.
"Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published nineteen novels and numerous short stories but is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. Robinson's work has been labeled by The Atlantic as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing."[1] According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."[2]"
Normal estimates have world population increasing for at least 50 years.
So either we start running out of jobs before then or not, remembering we are only 10-20 years into the internet revolution.
People on UBI will either play computer games/use drugs or become people focused. Which means more family orientated. And a baby should cost a lot less than it's UBI.
(This assumes the correct definition of UBI not the one used to try and implement European style unemployment benefits in America)
90 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadhttps://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071514/why-social-s...
Everyone likes to spend on a credit card, no one likes it when the statement comes and you have to pay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
What you're describing would be an anti-social program.
Sounds like a nightmare (for some).
And why even bother, if you feel that "this place is pathetic. pseudo-intellectualism and autism run rampant" (according to your profile)?
Please seek professional help outside HN. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, there is no shame in asking for help, but the internet is a bad place to get it.
If we can live with less people who are happier, what's not to like?
He's been thinking about this for a while, for sure. And I do wonder what is going to happen if we all get a 'chance' to live to 300 or something. Or forever. Yikes.
Our species-optimal lifespan now might be quite different than the one picked by evolution. It could be much greater, or it could be lower. But twiddling with that dial carries a lot of risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x98KFcMJeo
Further, this video paints a vivid collapse. I believe we would instead see a gradual decline. Maybe we're seeing that today?
https://aeon.co/essays/why-inequality-bothers-people-more-th...
More people most of all means more people who can and necessarily will break things, which are very hard to repair. Like climate stuff. The chance of having some super geniuses, that we would otherwise have missed out on, who then repair a broken climate is ... vanishingly small.
In Europe they fired the ovens for these people.
In the Middle East and Africa they are still fighting that war.
In places like Poland to have status was to have land and vice versa so long as there was a solar economy; once people started burning coal and the economy became capital intensive yesterday’s aristocrats were nobodies and people who had previously been low-status doctors, business people and teachers (e.g. Jewish people) were on top.
Naturally those aristocrats were not happy about it. This all happened in about one and half human lifetimes and the people involved "wanted their country back".
If you look at Lenin vs. the Kulaks or Mao Zhedong vs. the world in both cases they realized their country was on the trailing edge of industrialization and decided they would beat down people in the country to accumulate capital and outgrow "the west". Hitler rode the fear of communism to power.
I am more looking at the long term effects here, because I care about future generations too.
Another problem with your view is, that you are totally disregarding other species on planet Earth, which are going extinct or become endangered species in this very moment, in which we enjoy that our "condition is better than ever".
I don't think we're living on credit forever as productivity/technology has improved over time.
We have emission targets to return to year 2000 or year 1980s levels.
We can have similar targets for pops: 1900s or 1960s, before we had fast doublings of populations, obviously through natural reduction rather than forced.
(note of course I dont agree with everything said here)
The datapoint I linked to above would be completely impossible in a %P genius model.
This has the big advantage of not just increasing the raw number of "geniuses" but also the ratio of geniuses.
The current population is not even sustainable. Half it and then perhaps it will be sustainable, if capped. Ecological damage will probably increase in the future, as swathes of people from developing countries will want to have the same living standards, that the first world countries experienced for decades. If you combine that with 11 billion people, it will be a disaster.
I recently heard about China stopping the one-child law stuff and I only wanted to facepalm. That's so typical. "We need more population for all our old people here!" disregarding what will happen with the planet (an objectively much more important thing than China, but hey, it's not China, so not their problem, right?!), if population surges again in China. I just hope, that the experts are correct and that it will not lead to another population increase.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
If you make a certain set of highly unrealistic assumptions about what "sustainable" requires, yes.
If you look at how human history has actually gone, you find that doomsayers in every time could find trends that, if projected out forever into the future, looked "unsustainable". And of course, if those trends had continued as they were, it would not have been sustainable. But the trends never continued as they were.
We humans can adapt to change by changing how we do things. Claims that our current population, or indeed any current human activity, is "unsustainable" ignore that crucial fact.
11 billion people living in the same way we are living in the first world would be impossible.
If you ask me if I would trade places with that 200 years ago person I would say no. If you ask a person 200 years hence if they'd trade places with me I have no doubt that they'd say no as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson
"Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published nineteen novels and numerous short stories but is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. Robinson's work has been labeled by The Atlantic as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing."[1] According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."[2]"
Normal estimates have world population increasing for at least 50 years.
So either we start running out of jobs before then or not, remembering we are only 10-20 years into the internet revolution.
People on UBI will either play computer games/use drugs or become people focused. Which means more family orientated. And a baby should cost a lot less than it's UBI.
(This assumes the correct definition of UBI not the one used to try and implement European style unemployment benefits in America)